Memorial Address 



on 



JOHN T. MORGAN 

By Claud L. Chilton 




Delivered before tKe 

Woman's Auxiliary) of tKe 

SoutKern Commercial Congress 

Mobile, Alabama 

Oct. 0,8, igi3 



Memorial Address 



on 



JOHN T. MORGAN 

By Claud L. CKilton 




Delivered before the 

Woman's Auxiliary) of the 

Southern Commercial Congress 

Mobile, Alabama 

Oct. 0.8, 1913 










Yv. nM*^ 



A Memorial Address on 

JOHN TYLER MORGAN 

Madam President and Ladies: 

My business is that of persuading gallant ships to pass 
through a canal that connects the two great oceans of Time and 
Eternity — a canal that was dug by the holiest of hands at the 
price of His own heart's blood; and it is somewhat out of my 
element to appear in such a role as this; but your very kind 
President, Eve-like, over-persuaded me, and made it appear, in 
spite of .my protestations to the contrary, that the good women 
of the Convention would listen to my story and that it would 
be no violation of propriety that a kinsman of Senator Morgan 
should say somewhat in his praise. Indeed, I myself have 
reckoned that to be but sorry modesty which hesitates to burnish 
a great name, lest the reflected lustre should fall upon one's 
own hand; and so I will venture to say what my time will 
allow as to the relation of John T. Morgan to the Panama 
Canal, and the present duty of making his name glorious in 
connection with it by achieving the great aims which he so 
ardently and assiduously cherished, rather than by encomiums 
upon his statesmanship. 

I happen to know by personal conversation and correspond- 
ence, more of Senator Morgan's views and hopes regarding this 
great enterprise than appears to the public; and one thing I am 
assured of: that he pursued this great work from motives of the 
purest patriotism. 

Whatever may be said of any great accomplishment, no 
achievement can be so great as the motive which gave it birth 
and impetus. 



Memorial Address — John T. Morgan 



It was a pure and lofty patriotism that stirred the heart of 
the great-souled Morgan— a true faitli that dared to believe that 
possible which precedent had called impossible, and to see in 
vision the things that are not as though they were. 

John T. Morgan was a great lawyer and a great statesman, 
but he was a greater patriot — a real lover of his country. This 
over-ruling passion evinced itself in all his military and civic 
career, and I am sure if his great spirit could be present today 
and hear the encomiums heaped upon his name, he would per- 
haps be pleased with nothing that might be said of him so much 
as what your humble speaker has said of him elsewhere — who, 
in speaking to his own bereaved Alabama, laid this wild flower 
on his bier: 

"From the mountains to the sea. 

Counting all thy children o'er — 
None e'er lived more true than he, 

Nor lived that loved thee. Mother, more." 

Patriotism is like fire; it is enkindled and burns the fiercer as 
the breath of the oppressor endeavors to extinguish it. It 
sheds its gentle and holy light upon the hearthstone in the home 
of peace when "The twilight meets the plaintive whip-poor-will ;" 
but when the cold and cruel blast of oppression stirs the smoul- 
dering embers, it leaps into a conflagration whose fiery tongues 
lick the stars of heaven and sear the deathless names of heroes 
and patriots into the adamant of endless ages ! 

There are, as I take it, four epochs in the life of John T. 
Morgan in which his patriotism, developed by the winds of op- 
pression, sprang into heroic action. 

The first was when his country was invaded, and it was pro- 
posed to cut by the edge of the sword, the most sacred cords 
which ever bound Sovereigns to a solemn troth. 

Called on to take part in the Secession Convention, he signed 
liis name to the ordinance which declared the sovereign inde- 

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Memorial Address — John T. Morgan 

pendence of the Confederate States; and the echoes of the first 
bugle blast had not died in solemn hush upon the hills and val- 
leys of Alabama when, as a private, he marched to the front, 
and bared his breast to the storm of death in defense of the 
rights of his country under the Constitution. The fact of his 
return to his home at the end of a four years struggle, with 
the commission of a Brigadier General, and a spotless escutch- 
eon, proved the first trial and triumph of his patriotism. 

The second epoch which I note, is the great political emer- 
gency which called him to the hustings to fight a battle no 
less fierce than the first. 

This State had been nominally received back into the Union, 
but under a regime — unparalleled in the annals of civilization — 
a horde of consciousless harpies had been loosed upon the pros- 
trate form of a helpless and defenseless people — a people whose 
great Lee had surrendered under the pledge of real peace — a 
horde of consciousless harpies, I say, to strip the slain of what 
had been left after the unspeakable horrors of Sherman and 
his like. 

Under this regime, all the horrors of which history will never 
utter, this State with others had become absolutely bankrupt. A 
debt of multiplied millions of dollars had been created — the 
principal of which was pocketed (by the most daring yeggmen 
that ever sand-bagged a hapless traveler) by means of the 
newly enfranchised and ignorant blacks — the interest of which 
was kindly entailed upon the coming generations of the inno- 
cent and unborn. 

The cash gone, the credit gone, the interest eating like a vul- 
ture on the vitals, the Legislature composed of consciousless 
whites and ignorant blacks, the State faced utter and irremedia- 
ble ruin. There was only one thing to do — this flock of harpies 
had to be swept off the face of the earth and the Capitol, like 
the Augean stables, had to be cleansed. 



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Memorial Address — J ohn T. Morgan 



At this critical juncture, in 1871, John T. Morgan volun- 
teered his services, and leaving his business and home, and for- 
getting every other consideration, he went out into the hills 
and mountains of North Alabama, and throughout the State, 
with an eloquence born of desperation, and by this means, more 
than by the efforts of any other one man, overthrew the horde 
of our oppressors, and saved the State from a ruin more ter- 
rible than war. This was the second trial and triumph of his 
patriotism. 

In recognition of his most eminent service in this crisis, he 
was elected to the United States Senate without an opposing 
vote, — the first and only office which he ever held and which 
he held and adorned for over thirty years. 

As Ambassador of the State of Alabama to the Government 
of the United States, he was as true and loyal to the United 
States Government as he had been always to his own State, and 
in the delicate and most responsible of all positions in the Senate 
— that of Chairman of the Committee on Foreign Relations — he 
rendered signal service to his country in its contests with the 
world-powers, and, as he had always done, stood steadfast and 
unmovable for the just claims and sovereign rights of the United 
States as against all the world. 

In his place as United States Senator, he was called to meet 
the third great emergency in his public life. The Republican 
Party, in perfect consistency with its avowed purpose, not only 
to free the negroes but to see to it that they should exercise 
the franchise which it had so unwisely conferred upon them, (a 
consummation that would have fastened upon the South for- 
ever the shackles of commercial, political and moral ruin), was 
about to pass the so-called "Force Bill," of infamous memory, 
in which it was proposed to send United States troops through- 
out the South to guard the polls and to see to it that the negroes 
were allowed to vote — of course, with the understanding that 
they were to vote the Republican ticket. 

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Memorial Address — John T. Morgan 

This emergency sprang IVIorgan to action more quickly, if pos- 
sible, than did the tocsin of war, and he made up his mind that 
he was going to throw himself into the breach and apply the 
only remedy that remained, and speak until he fell or the bill 
died. The bill died! He threw his whole soul and mind and 
body into this heroic struggle and made a speech which will go 
down in political history as one of the greatest achievements 
since the days of Horatius. The South will never know from 
what a doom it was saved by that heroic action. 

But while his conspicuous service evinced his fidelity to and 
pride in the whole country, he felt that he had a special call 
to serve his own Southland and his own State. 

Call it provincialism and sectionalism if you please, but it is 
true, nevertheless, that there can be no true patriotism without 
a hearthstone, no real love of country which can glory in the pros- 
perity of a federal commonwealth whose riches are amassed at 
the expense of the poverty of one's own race, his section, his 
State, his family and his home. It is unthinkable that any man 
can love the whole country, who, at the same time, acquiesces in 
the wrongs and condones the injustices, — the limitations and 
handicaps which a more prosperous majority of another section 
may have forged and fastened upon his own people. Where 
one's section is involved, a partriotism cannot exist which is 
not "sectional," and he is the greatest lover of his race who is 
most sensitive to his own honor and most chivalrous in defense 
of his own hearthstone. 

I say this, because I desire to emphasize the fact, that in the 
undertaking of an isthmian canal. Senator Morgan was not only 
impelled by the desire to benefit his country as a whole, but he 
was moved by the patriotic impulse to benefit his beloved South- 
land especially. 

This stupendous undertaking constituted the fourth great 
epoch in his public life, and its achievement was the climacteric 
event in his useful and honorable career. 



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Mem 



orial Address-John T. Morgan 



He realized clearlv and felt deeply the fact that for fifty 
years the people of the once proud and commanding South had 
been the industrial slaves of the North. Under the policy which 
the Republican Party dictated, and Republican money brought 
to pass, the South had been under the incubus of conditions 
which doomed it to poverty, conditions which shut it up to the 
necessity of exporting all its products as raw material and of 
importing all its supplies of almost every character from other 
sections, paving the manufacturer's legitimate profit, plus the 
protective tariff, plus the jobber's profit, plus the banker's 
interest, plus the freight both ways, plus the local freight from 
the point of distribution to the place of sale, plus the retailer's 
profit, plus the interest on the mortgage to pay for it all out 
of the raw material when it should be brought to market! 

Under such conditions, if the South had not been the fairest 
spot the sun ever shone upon, if the negro had not been the 
happiest race that ever lived on nothing, if the white people 
of the South had not possessed such wonderful resiliency, our 
commercial bones would have lain bleaching in the sun long ago. 
There was one way out— only one xoay. That way was to 
dia: a canal across the Isthmus of Barien, which would give the 
South the advantage in the race for the Orient, the future great 
market of the world. 

Heretofore our cotton, timber and iron had to go North to be 
manufactured into the finished product, and thence it was 
transported across the continent by rail, or over the Panama 
Railway at great expense, or through the Strait of Magellan. 
Senator Morgan foresaw that an Isthmian Canal would change 
all this, our Southern material would be manufactured on South- 
ern soil and shipped direct to the Orient at a saving of two 
thousand miles in freight. 

Against this great project there were five great obstacles; 
the trans-contentinental railways, the New England Manufac- 
turer, the New York Capitalists, Northern prejudice and the 

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Memorial Address — John T. Morgan 



fact of French failure. Under such odds the idea was scouted, 
ridiculed, pronounced Utopian. But with that dauntless courage 
and determination which he had always displayed, Senator 
Morgan kept on his way. For twenty long years he kept on at it. 
With tongue and pen, year in and year out he persisted. Gradu- 
ally he overcame prejudice and party spirit, he attacked first 
one and then another of the opposing conditions. When failure 
seemed imminent he redoabled his energy, when hope was de- 
ferred he still fought on. You know the rest. A few days ago 
the President touched a key,— the last obstruction was blown 
away and the waters of the stormy Atlantic mingled in swirling 
currents with those of the great sister Ocean of Peace, and the 
South is forever free! Her commercial captivity and industrial 
slavery is at an end. Her shackles of a protective (for the North) 
tariff fell from her hands a few weeks ago; the legislation which 
will prevent the domination of Wall Street will unbind her feet 
tomorrow; the greatest markets of the world will be opened for 
her when the first Southern-made goods in American bottoms 
will pass through the great canal, and then, when, like the man 
at the beautiful gate of the Temple of old, under the touch of 
our great statesman the South will be walking and leaping 
and praising God,— with her face to the glowing East and the 
fire of a new youth in her eye, as she launches her barque into the 
yielding waves of the Pacific, she will remember her benefactor 
and throw back a kiss of love to the memory of John Tyler 
Morgan ! 

Columbus in discovering America did little else than to bring 
an unknown continent into view, but that was enough, and his 
name will be linked with its greatness to the last syllable of 
recorded time. 

John T. Morgan in his heroic struggles and persistent labor 
to promote the Isthmian Canal only brought it into practical 
possibility, but his name will live in the glory of our emancipated 
Southland and in the broader commerce of the whole wide world. 

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Memorial Address-John T. Morgan 



as long as waves shall clap their hands and genius and patriotism 
are regarded by mankind. 

The Panama Canal has brought the South at last into its own. 
It has come to pass that her sun has risen in the East!— may 
it go down no more forever! 

As long as stars shJl shine and rivers flow, 

Among the stars her sovereign states shall glow, 

Till future ages shall her praise repeat. 

And list'ning nations crowd around her feet. 

I cannot appropriately or conscientiously close these re- 
marks without one thought more— the noble life and character 
of this great man was moulded at the knee of the saintliest of 
mothers; and along with the great ideals which she planted in his 
young heart was the white rose of the utmost reverence for wo- 
manhood, and especially the high ideals of Southern woman- 

hood. 

I intend no invidious comparisons when I say that I believe 
that the ideal of American womanhood, and especially the ideal 
of ante-bellum Southern womanhood, has seldom been equalled— 
certainly never been surpassed in the world. To maintain that 
high ideal was an ambition out-ruling all else in Morgan's 
heart. He knew that — 

"111 fares the land— to hastening ills a prey, 
Where wealth accumulates and men decay," 

And it was his most cherished ambition to preserve intact the 
glorious traditions, virtues, and supremacy of the Anglo-Saxon 
in the South. That supremacy no matter how great our com- 
mercial prosperity, cannot outlast our real worth — the nobility 
of our men and the purity of our women. It is written, "The 
prosperity of fools shall destroy them." It is most difficult — 

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Memorial A ddr e s s-J o hn T. Morgan 
I may say almost impossible, not to be commercialized by Com- 



merce 



The glorious civilization developed in this country-in New 
England by the Puritans-(and Mary Chilton was among the 
first)-among the Cavaliers in Virginia and the Huguenots m 
the Carolinas-had for its substratum the God-fearing, heaven^ 
typed home, presided over by a God-fearing ^heaven-faced 
woman. These people and their children stood the prxvat^ons 
and hardships of frontier life, the tomahawk of the savage; they 
have come up out of the fiercest and bloodiest conflicts wh.ch 
history ever recorded sans peur et sans reproche, they have 
withstood the pinchings of poverty and the injustices wh.ch 
have been heaped upon them for fifty years-thexr honor aU 
unsullied:-shall we brave the horrors of war and the r.gor o 
hard bondage to be felled by the velvet touch of Mammon? 

God forbid! i, j ,^ 

The commercializing of woman would usher the black shadow 
of our National eclipse. Our American Eagle has two wmgs- 
one, Commerce and one. Character. To wound either is to f all. 
The greatest asset of any country is its people, and the 
chief conservator of all that is worthy is found in its women. 
May we, in our outlook for a greater future, preserve this, the 
best of all the past-the purest of womanhood, and while the 
black smoke of grim and grimy Commerce pours from the fun- 
nels of our trans-Pacific steamers may the beautiful face of the 
saintliest of womanhood adorn the prow of every one of them 
and kiss the spray of every parting wave. 



